Saturday, June 11, 2005

Baseball

Baseball has been very, very good to me.

One of you asked who my date to the baseball game was. It was none other than DV$, who I met via comments he left on this here blog. He's posted about our evening together too. It was quite a lot of fun.

The game was a bit of a crusher for the Mariner's fan in me. I honestly didn't know that I cared that much about the Mariners winning since I am also a Nat's fan these days. I would have been happier if it were a close game, but great play by the Nat's and mediocre play by the Mariner's lead to the outcome. A few game highlights: a triple by Wilkerson, Ichiro caught in a squeeze play between third and home, two incredibly difficult and almost identical plays to first fielded by Hasagawa--the first time he got the out, the second time he was just late with the toss.

We went for beers after and I thought we might give my old neighborhood bar, Tunicliff's, a try. There was a crowd out front and we approached slowly. I said, "It looks too crowded. Can you tell what's going on?" We tried to move past a line of people standing near a limo and a young man in a black suit said, "Could you please move back a couple of steps?" We did and stood there. Then, the whole Clinton family came out of the bar. Hillary, Chelsea and, finally, Big Bill. They waved and said hello. Someone shouted, "Run Hillary!" She smiled and said, "Thank you!" One of the guys in the tiny crowd jumped up and asked to have his picture taken with Big Bill, who wasn't that into it, "I'm in a hurry, I have my family waiting for me, so make it quick." The guy put his arm around Bill, and his friend snapped the shot. I said, "I didn't even vote for him."

"Who did you vote for?"

"Nader. No, wait, I did vote for him the first time." (I did vote for Kerry this time. Not that I love Kerry. Mostly, I just hate Bush.)

We stood there not quite believing our eyes. The limo pulled away, Clintons safely inside. A big-ass black SUV pulled out after them.

We walked down to the Lil' Pub, the friendliest dive on the Hill. I said, "Are you thinking, 'I have to blog about this'?"

"Guilty!"

"It's impossible not to think about it!"

DV$ bought all the beer that night (thanks). We had a Bud at the Lil Pub and moved on to the Capitol Lounge for slightly better quality beer. He asked if I wanted a mixed drink and I said, "I want to be full of beer." We talked blog, we talked relationship advice and we had a good time. He almost explained to me what my problem was but resisted, probably in order not to give offense. We didn't make plans, but I like to think we will hang out again.

In the blog conversation, I talked about my readership. "You have a lot of ego--talking about your audience like that. I guess ego is necessary for blogging."
"It’s funny, I do have a lot of ego about it. The only thing I've ever had much ambition about, that I've felt very intensely about, is writing. You bet your ass I want an audience."

Amazing that I spent all those years pursuing the PhD (nothing but bitterness and regret in those stories, I told DV$, not even the saving grace of humor) and never felt nearly as strongly about it. Sure I cared and I had a little bit of ambition. But, not much, not like this. So, tell your friends about this blog, because I want the whole world to read is. I want to be popular. Is that so wrong?

DV$ is a writer and has other ambitions as well. But I think blogging means something different to him. Kind of a great thing about this media--it's flexible enough to accommodate many different purposes. It's been a great, great thing for me. Meeting people through the blog by getting comments and reading their blogs is definitely one of the best things about it. Meeting a new friend through the blog is a completely unexpected pleasure.